Fail your way to success.

W.H. Auden said, in one of The Second Coming, one of his most famous poems,  that "things fall apart, the center cannot hold.", but whether you believe that or not, there is no secret that things change. Life, death, sickness, marriage, divorce, a new career, the loss of a job. Things change.

Change is often inconvenient. At least it has been for me. It's often scary and never happens at a good time. (Can someone tell me what a good time would be?).  Our first thought when things change unexpectedly is rarely to jump up and down and say "Oh, Goody!". We are more likely to wring our hands and worry.

That is the way most of us are wired. We want security. We want things to be comfortable, familiar, safe. If only life worked that way.

I have to tell you, I have given up on the idea of comfortable, secure and safe. Don't get me wrong, I have had periods of all three in my life and they were wonderful. But I have learned that mostly, they do not last.

Knowing that means I can either let life's explosions knock me down, or use them as a catalyst for improvement.   I have lost two jobs to layoffs in my life. I am divorced. I've come close to dying twice. My list of unexpected changed and failures could loom pretty large.

And I won't lie to you. Those changes hit me hard at first. I suffered shock in most of those episodes that left me beaten down, unfocused, not much use to anyone.

But the thing is, those were episodes, not who I was, and in each case, I found my way back, and after the initial shock, used those knockdowns. I have been able to say, "OK, this has changed. Why? What do I need to keep from before the change and what do I need to think about changing for the better."

Embrace the change. Get help if you need it. (Heaven knows, I didn't do it all alone.). Get a coach, a mentor, a counselor, a clear headed friend, and embrace it. Grow with it,

Here's the other part of what I have learned. If we let it, change improves us and our circumstances. I'd hate to think what a milktoast of a person I would be without some of the changes I hated and dreaded so much. I am scarred, but stronger. I am wounded, but wiser. I have failed, but I have failed my way to success time and time again.

And I am nothing extraordinary. I am just like you. Know what that means?

You can fail your way to success too.

Creative people often know this instinctively. Because they have drawn or written or composed or painted a lot of bad art to get to the good, final piece. That's what artists do, create, fail, create fail, create and fail again until they get it right. SOmehow though, they find joy in the creative process, even when they don't get it right at first.

That's part of why I think creative people can potentially be great managers. They don't punish people for their failures as long as the failures are not repeated, and are used as a stepping stone to success. They understand that change and failure and experimentation are part of the path to something far, far greater.

People who know me know I am a person of faith. In the bible, my favorite character is Peter, who fails again and again, whose life changes radically when he chooses to follow Jesus, changes again when Christ is crucified, again when he was raised and again at the time before Penticost. What a roller coaster he lived on. yet, in the end, he is portrayed as a great man of God. The keys of the kingdom were handed to Peter of the holy roller coaster.

So, and I am talking to myself as well as anyone here, when change happens, it's OK to let it knock the wind out of you... for a short while. But then it's time to get up and put it that change to work for you. Because it can.

If we let it.

Tom

Falling off the Wagon

For the past few weeks I have been applying some of the principles from Leo Babauta's book, The Power of Less,  to my work and to my creative work. One of the main principles of his book is about focus, unitasking instead of multitasking.

This is important for us creative types I think because more often than creative block because of not enough ideas, we tend to be blocked because we have too MANY ideas floating around in our head, and our bigger challenge is to focus on enough of them to produce creative work. It's paralysis by piling on. Babauta's book, and indeed, the story of his life, is about wrestling and focusing on less to (in the long run) create and produce more, with less stress.

I was not far into the book when I was saying "sign me up for this one!"

And so I began, with tiny steps (far more sustainable), leaving e-mail off except for 2-3 times a day on the office. Breaking my day into 1-2 hour blocks and focusing on one thing that hour. Not bouncing from thing to thing. Putting aside some of my creative projects to focus on one or two of them. Reading not six books at a time, but one at a time. And to no one's surprise (but to my great joy), I found myself just where he said I would be, more productive, making more progress, stressed less and finding more joy in the work I was doing.

Late last week, I fell off the wagon. And for a few days my mind reverted back to my monkey mind self, bouncing from idea to idea. It was exhilarating, until I realized that for all the ideas ping-ponging in my head, I was accomplishing nothing.

Now, we creative types, I am told, tend to beat ourselves up over falling off the wagon. And I confess to having done the same thing. That kind of self flogging is yet another way we keep ourselves from being happily creative. We tend to be like alcoholics, thinking "I have fallen off the wagon. It's no use. I am hopelessly (fill in your own negative descriptor)"

See yourself there? I suspect some of us do. That's the inner critic, the devil himself, if you will, doing his damndest to keep us from being our powerful, productive self.

Well I made my devil a bit angry this week. I didn't beat myself up,. I didn't angst. I just got back to my better habits. I got back to meditation Sunday, after a few days off. And I pushed aside the snow shower of ideas and got back to work on what I am working on NOW. And just as simply as that, I have found myself productive again.

Now, you need to realize I am absolutely nothing special in the pantheon of creativity. I have no great willpower or insight. So If I can fall off the wagon and get back on again and again, so can you.

My hero in all this is not some great writer or artist. It's Peter of New Testament fame. That poor man fell back to his nature again and again, But through prayer and discipline (and help from the Holy Spirit, which is available to all of us, BTW) he became the great man of God that Jesus predicted he would be. Haven't read the story lately? It's worth a read for inspiration, trust me.

So, if you have fallen off the wagon, let go of it. It happens. And it's not fatal.Trust me on this one. I have at least a master's degree in not being effectively creative. And yet, I have a pretty good body of work behind me, and in front of me.

You can too.

Be blessed,

Tom

Poetry: Lost

Lost

You are lost again,
one wrong turn and suddenly
you find yourself in a land of mystery,
without landmarks,

traveling late at night,
with no sun to guide you,
no friendly lights where you can stop
and ask your way.

And so, you trust your feelings,
your intuition, aware of the times
it has saved you and
failed you,

in the past. You turn right,
to a place where bright neon
cuts through the night
in dark, empty city windows.

But age has brought an understanding
of your sometimes blindness, and
how it leads you down strange roads,
and so

you leave the extra time in life
to fail, aware that at times,
wrongness is part of the direction
home.

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The photograph was taken in Roanoke, Virgina, a few years ago. It is one of my favorite photographs I have ever taken. You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom